


10,000 Years

by cory_silver



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 06:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10692018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cory_silver/pseuds/cory_silver
Summary: "10,000 years was too long for John Sheppard to get his mind around... Sometimes, though, in the middle of the night, he could feel all of that time pressing on him as if it were a tangible thing."A city that has been abandoned at the bottom of the ocean for 10,000 years has some serious creepiness potential, so this was my response to the Halloween challenge on sga_flashfic (LiveJournal) in 2006.





	10,000 Years

10,000 years was too long for John Sheppard to get his mind around. His brain supplied that it was 270 times the length of his life so far, and that if his ancestors had averaged having children around age 18, 556 generations of his family had passed during that time.

Doing the math didn’t help. When he tried to imagine 10,000 years of Atlantis dark and dormant beneath the ocean, all he could see was a three-dimensional still image. The fourth dimension of time was too vast for him to comprehend. Sometimes, though, in the middle of the night, he could feel all of that time pressing on him as if it were a tangible thing.

John woke with a gasp, with a sudden awareness of a presence in the darkened room. The lights flared instantly, responding to his need to dispel the darkness before he was even conscious of articulating the thought. His militarily tidy room was as empty as it had been four hours before. He was alone.

Not just alone: lonely. He wondered what he had been dreaming, that he woke with such a profound sense of loneliness. 10,000 years worth of loneliness, he thought.

Without really deciding to, he stood and pulled on pants and a jacket, automatically grabbing his sidearm on the way out the door. The halls of Atlantis were still and silent at this time of night, and only the dim lights at the floor level lit briefly to show him his path. He didn’t turn around, not wanting to see the lights extinguishing behind him. His footsteps seemed to echo for miles.

John found himself standing in front of a window. It was the same window where he had first seen that the city was under water. Now it showed him a night sky and the surface of a choppy sea reflecting distorted stars. The hair on the back of his neck was prickling. He still didn’t turn around.

“What do you want from me?” he breathed, barely a whisper.

The answer came easily into his mind, in a voice that was not the voice of his thoughts. “Rebuild our city. Make it strong again. Win.”

He wanted to protest that he was not the person they needed. He couldn’t promise not to let down one more population. Instead he asked, “Why did you pick me?”

“Because you are our child.”

And although he could not trace his bloodline historically through 556 generations, he knew that he was.


End file.
